The Thunder Breaks
by Mellia Bee
Summary: Six days since the Snap, and Thor hasn't stopped to rest yet. Clouds churn in the sky, but he holds them back doggedly, unwilling to open his broken heart, devoured with self-blame. But then someone finds him and offers exactly what he needs the most - forgiveness. Oneshot set immediately after Infinity War, slightly AU, no Endgame spoilers whatsoever.


**Going through my drafts and found a little something I wrote right after I saw _Infinity_ _War_, before we knew - well, before we knew a lot of things, really. So here, in honor of _Endgame _coming out, I thought I'd dust it off and share some slightly AU Thor hurt/comfort with you. Because that guy needs a hug, dash it all!**

**Note: this contains _Infinity War _spoilers, but no _Endgame _spoilers, unless I'm somehow a really amazing guesser.**

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**The Thunder Breaks**

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Six days.

Six days since the unthinkable had happened.

Six days since half the universe's population had been torn from existence - six days of struggle, of global turmoil, of wrenching grief.

Six days since Thanos had won.

In Wakanda, nobody was still entirely sure of the casualty list. How many warriors still lay on the battlefield, dead eyes staring sightlessly at the sky, or locked in a struggle for life as they waited to be found - and how many would never be found again, their ashes scattered on the wind? Search teams still scoured the hillside where the final battle had taken place, but there was little hope left of finding any more survivors this late in the game.

The most they could hope for was to find bodies. Burials were luxuries, now - a final gift to the family that so many would never be able to have.

Shuri had chosen not to compete for the vacant throne of Wakanda. "I can do more with my science than with a scepter," she had answered simply, when asked. "We've thought him dead before; I will not give up on my brother so easily." M'Baku, too, seemed reluctant to claim the throne, though he willingly took up the burden of repairing the defenses, organizing the leaderless people, and heading the rescue efforts. For now, the throne stood silent, empty.

The castle, however, was not.

Shuri, although not a queen in name, commanded the hearts and souls of her people, inspiring them with the same fiery, stubborn hope that she displayed. In an unprecedented move, and with the approval of the elders of her people, she opened the gates and sent invitations to the world's leading scientists.

_Come to Wakanda. If there is a solution to be found, if there is a way to defeat this monster once and for all, then we will find it. In this dark hour, Wakanda welcomes you._

"Has this ever been done before?" Steve Rogers asked her quietly. They stood by one of the large windows in the palace, overlooking the grounds and beyond that, the city. He hadn't slept since the devastating events of six days before, and he still moved stiffly from his injuries, but he had been at the forefront of the search for survivors until that morning, when she had called him back to the palace and informed him of her plans.

Shuri shook her head. Standing as close to her as he was, Steve could see the hollows beneath her eyes, the strain in the face that she kept so proud, so composed in the eyes of her people. Shuri was suffering deeply - she simply refused to show it.

Steve could understand that well.

"Never," she answered him. "But these are days of impossibilities, and so we open our doors. None of us can solve this alone."

She turned and looked pointedly at him, and he understood what she was saying.

"I'll get the Avengers together again," he promised. "We'll be ready, whatever you come up with."

It wouldn't be easy. Rhodey had been recalled to America to give a report to the president and what remained of Congress, and Natasha too had left. Everybody knew she was trying to find her old friend - her partner Clint, who wasn't answering any of his calls. Banner had stayed in Wakanda, burying his shaking hands elbow-deep in simulations and satellite data and star charts as he tried to track down where in the galaxy Tony might have ended up.

As for Thor…

Steve followed Shuri's eyes to the dark clouds swirling overhead. In the six days since half the world ended, the skies had been overcast, though no rain fell, no thunder rolled. Had it been the rainy season, it would have been less unusual, but this was summer, and Wakanda's hot, bright sun should have been shining from morning until night.

"I don't know," he answered her unspoken question, and swiped a tired hand across his face, raking the too-long hair out of his eyes. How Bucky stood - _had _stood - hair hanging in his face, he had no idea. "He says he's fine, but I haven't seen him slow down since it happened."

Shuri's mouth thinned, wobbled slightly before steadying. Her long fingers plucked at the beads on her wrist.

"None of us are fine," she said quietly. Her eyes looked older and sadder than they had any right to, in a face so young. "But I think perhaps he is the least fine of all."

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Thor was fine.

He _was_ fine.

It was good to work, to bury himself in helping these people. He lifted broken buildings, hauled the heavy, stinking carcasses of the many-armed alien fighters away to be burned, searched the ground for the bodies of noble warriors yet undiscovered. His new eye was good at that last, especially. It was more convenient to see out of both eye sockets at once - less lopsided. He wasn't sure how his father had stood it for so long.

"_What did you trade your eye for?" _he remembered asking Odin once, long ago. It was back in the days when he had been a child, fearless, unencumbered by the shadows that had grown about him in the last decade.

"_Wisdom," _his father had replied at length, with a smile that looked rather more sad than his voice implied. The golden eyepatch winked in the light; Thor stared at it, enthralled.

"_Did it hurt?" _ There was a morbid, fascinated curiosity in the question. It had hurt badly enough last week, when Loki had jabbed him in the face with a pointed, bony elbow during a wrestling match. He'd had a black eye for days. But to lose an eye entirely - the idea was as awful as it was interesting,

Odin hadn't answered for a long time, only looking at his son with an unreadable expression.

"_More than you can imagine," _he'd answered at last. "_But the pain has faded, and now it is only a reminder."_

"_A reminder of what?"_ Thor had asked - but his father wouldn't say.

He had a pretty good idea now, though. And unlike his father, he wasn't sure the pain would ever fade. He wasn't sure he wanted it to. Because for the pain to fade would feel like forgetting, at least in part - and to forget would be disloyal somehow to the memory of the thousands of men, women, and children that he and he alone now held honored in his heart.

Gritting his teeth, Thor heaved the body of yet another alien monster into the slowly growing heap. Their corpses would not further soil this land; he would see them burned first, though the inky, oily smoke polluted the air nearly as badly. A good storm would wash it all away.

A storm...

Clouds spun in the sky above, awaiting his call, but Thor only bowed his head and turned back to find some other way to help. He dared not unleash them - not now. As long as there was good work to do with his hands, he would do it, but to touch the skies would bare his heart, and he could _not_ do that.

Not yet.

He didn't know if the earth could stand it, if he did.

He was fine.

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Day turned to night, and night to day again - perhaps more than once, but it was all the same to him. The last of the monsters had been piled up, and lit on fire. One final column of black smoke joined the others ascending skyward. Thor was the one to find the last of the defeated Wakandan warriors, carrying the man's body back as tenderly as though there was still breath in it. To die with a weapon in hand, facing such overwhelming odds - that was an honorable death, and deserved respect.

He left the man at the makeshift morgue within the palace walls, nodding reverently to the women who would take the warrior to his last rest. And then, suddenly, there was nothing more to do for a moment.

A great weariness dragged at his heels, his body, at the heavy dead weight in his chest. Out in the outskirts of the city there was almost certainly need for his mighty arms and hammer - but nature had wrung him to the last dregs. He needed to rest, just a little, before returning to work.

Staggering slightly, the alien prince felt his way to a low bench just inside the tall hedge of the palace garden. It was quiet there, far from the noise and bustle of the relief efforts. Slowly, he removed the prosthetic eye, and rubbed at the empty, aching space behind it. Then, weary beyond endurance, he let his face drop into his hands.

For the first time since - since he couldn't even remember - he let himself drift.

He never knew how long he sat there, fallen into some kind of somnolent torpor, insensible alike to the world around him and to the mad buzzing in his head. He kept his good eye open - flames and dead faces danced behind his eyelids whenever they shut - but stared unseeingly at the gravel.

A footstep roused him - soft, hesitant.

"...Thor?"

Consciousness returned in a rush. He would have known that voice had it called him from the depths of Helheim. Looking up, he saw the woman who had said his name. She stood beside the edge of the hedge, plaid shirt fluttering a little in the breeze, warm brown eyes filled with a surprise that was slowly melting into something darker, alarmed, concerned.

"Oh my gosh, what happened to you?"

He was too stunned to feel anything for a moment. Then something like a sledgehammer struck his heart. _Alive_. _Someone of his was alive. _

"Jane."

He couldn't get any more words out, but he didn't need to. She closed the distance between them, reaching for his face. One palm cupped the edge of his jaw, tilting his head up, even as the fingers of the other hand stopped just short of touching him, drifting over the scarred skin and empty eye socket. He leaned involuntarily into her hand, hungry for something to remind him that he wasn't dead like the rest of his people.

"Your eye," she repeated, right as he finally managed to say, "I thought you dead."

They both floundered a little, then, not sure what to say. Then Thor bethought him of his prosthesis.

"Oh," he said, and pulled away to peer around him on the bench. "I - here it is." He clapped it into his head, blinking until Jane swam into focus again. He heard her gulp convulsively, so he pulled on a cheerful smile as he faced her. "All better now."

She sat slowly beside him, her grave eyes seeing more than he meant for them to see. An awkward pause followed - neither one had spoken since their relationship ended some months ago. She had learned of his plan to abdicate the throne of Asgard in favor of remaining with her, and had ended it all then and there, passionately refusing to let him step down from his inheritance for a mortal whose life was so much shorter than theirs.

He found it cruelly ironic that now she had managed to outlive the vast majority of the Asgardians in question.

Lost in his wandering thoughts, he almost missed the moment when Jane reached out a hand, faltered, half drew back, and then gently laid it on the edge of his gauntlet.

"I heard about Loki," she said. "Thor - I'm so sorry."

His throat ached intolerably at the reminder - hot and full and swollen. He swallowed hard, bowed his head to look at her small clean hand on his filthy arm. "Thank you," he said at last, because nothing else would come. The sharp crack of his brother's neck breaking echoed in his ears, and he flinched, hard.

"Why are you here?" he asked, to distract himself.

Jane's cheeks flushed like they did when she was excited by something. "Wakanda has invited the world's greatest scientists to come back up the Avengers. I got an invitation, can you believe it?"

She genuinely sounded surprised by her inclusion. Thor wasn't. This woman had the most inquisitive mind of any mortal he'd ever met. She could hold her head high in any gathering.

"I wish you well," he rumbled.

Jane broke off mid-sentence, and he realized he'd interrupted her. "You - you're joining us, right?"

He shook his once-golden head, now rusty with blood and grease. "No. I have sworn that Thanos shall die by my hand, but I will not risk the lives of my friends. It was my deed that brought this upon us, and I will end it."

Jane's fingers twitched against his arm. "You can't blame yourself, Thor. You couldn't have known what would happen."

Thor's ears pounded; the dead empty place in his chest felt like it was about to expand and swallow him whole. The ache in his throat had spread to his chest, his shoulders, his arms. Some wall of restraint deep inside him broke suddenly, and his words ran away from him, gathering strength as they spilled out like blood from a wound.

"Asgard lies in flames," he gritted between clenched teeth, "her people burnt to death or scattered frozen among the stars. I heard every bone break in my brother's neck and watched him die _again_, and could not even go to him. I have failed my home, my people, my family. I have trained for this fight, all unknowing, for my entire life - and when the moment came, I failed. The blood of half the galaxy is on _my_ hands, and untold multitudes cry out in agony, all because Thor Odinson, _the fool_, should have remembered that a _Titan - has - no - heart_."

Thunder cracked suddenly across the sky, sharp as a knife, then dying into a long, rolling rumble that seemed to last forever. The rising wind whipped Jane's hair, but she didn't move to brush it away, only leaning forward and laying her other small palm over the mighty fist clenched white-knuckled and shaking against Thor's knee.

"Thor," she said.

He looked down at his hand, surprised, and then put an effort into relaxing, hand flattening against his knee. The roll of thunder died into a low mutter, and then into silence. He swallowed hard, and bowed his head a little, eyes falling closed.

Jane licked her lips, and then patted the massive hand beneath her own.

"I forgive you."

The words fell into the sudden silence, spreading and pooling around them both. All sound seemed to stop - all nature held its breath. Even Thor did not move. Then he blinked slowly and looked up at her, forehead wrinkled uncomprehendingly.

"...what?"

The words came more easily the second time. "I forgive you," she repeated.

He looked blankly at her, and then his shoulders sagged. "You can't forgive me this," he told her, voice rough and gentle all at once. "Jane, this is infinitely bigger than you. I am not worthy of forgiveness."

Jane nodded. "I know," she said. She did. She was a scientist - she understood the concept of infinity as well as any scientist could. "But that's how forgiveness works. You don't need to deserve it. You just need to learn how to accept it."

She couldn't read his face, but his voice shook when he finally asked, "Jane - who did you lose?"

Her throat closed for a long moment. When she could speak again, the words were tearful, her voice higher than usual until it sounded almost childlike. "My grandparents," she confessed. My next-door neighbor - not the nice one," she clarified with a shaky, almost hysterical laugh, "you know, the one that used to peek through the blinds at you. Most of my coworkers. My aunt and three of my cousins." She choked on a sob. "Darcy."

A wave of renewed loss and compassion swept across Thor's face, and he turned his hand to envelop hers in the only gesture of comfort he could give. His little friend - his little, lively Darcy.

"I'm sorry," he offered.

Jane gulped and nodded. "Me too," she said. "And I'm going to have to work an awful lot harder to forgive that big purple bozo for killing them, because I'm still so mad at him that I can't even think straight." She took a deep breath. "But I can forgive you. And so I am. And I know in the grand scale of things it doesn't mean much - but doesn't it mean something?"

Thor's mouth moved, but no words came out. The bleak heartbreak and self-blame and despair in his eyes was too much for Jane to bear.

So she did the only thing she could think to do. She turned towards him on the bench, reached out both arms, and wrapped them as far around his shoulders as she could.

He stiffened.

"You are not alone," she breathed into his ear. "All of us - we all dropped the ball on this one, and we all need to fix it. Together. And unlike _him_, we have heart, so we will win in the end."

Thor was trembling by the time she finished, clinging to his stoic front with all the last remaining shreds of his strength, his brow furrowed deeply with the effort. "Jane," he choked. It was the only word he could form. "Jane…"

"I forgive you," she whispered again, and that time it was as easy as breathing. "You are not alone."

And then he broke.

Jane pulled him closer as the first drops fell - large wet drops that quickly increased in both frequency and size. Overhead, thunder rolled again, a long, low, ineffably sad sound that echoed from corner to corner of the sky. The patter of distinct drops increased to become a rush, a sheet of water falling from the sky, hissing quietly against the leaves of the garden around them, drowning out Thor's choked sobs, drenching them both to the skin. The whole world wept along with the mighty prince locked in Jane's arms, his face buried in her shoulder, his broken heart finding solace in her touch even as he locked her into his embrace as if she was the only thing on earth left to him.

And Jane - Jane held him close as well, the rain on her upturned face mingling with her own tears as she comforted her grieving prince, mourning with him over all the senseless loss, the crushing despair, the bitter should-haves and might-have-beens. Gently, she carded her fingers through his filthy, bloody, muddy hair, loosening the grime so the warm, cleansing rain could wash it away.

She'd meant what she said, earlier, about fighting with heart. Thanos could not possibly comprehend the drive, the urgency, the need of those beings who knew how to love one another. In targeting half the universe, he had made himself a target for the other half.

They would meet again, she was sure of it. Someday, after they'd had time to grieve and regroup and get a fresh start, they would face their archenemy again.

And this time, united in their common humanity and heart - this time they must win.

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**I don't remember who it was, but somebody made the point that Thor has a huge heart, and every motivation he has is centered around it. It only makes sense for him to go for the Titan's heart, because that's how he himself is most deeply hurt. It just - it kills me, honestly.**

**I'll see _Endgame _tonight, so if you want to flail about it, give me twenty four hours and then shoot me a PM! But let's keep the reviews spoiler-free, please. Thanks so much for reading!**


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